Содержание выпуска: November 2016 — Computer Shopper

GLITCHY WI-FI is one of my biggest technology bugbears. We’re a developed country with a decent GDP, an advanced infrastructure, and a plethora of communications businesses and experts. So why is it that my mobile loses wireless connection, for the tenth time that day, despite the apparent availability of countless ‘free’ Wi-Fi networks anywhere from shopping centres to the Tube? For those among us who haven’t opted for a generous yet expensive mobile data package, this matters. If you’re downloading huge files or streaming video on your tablet or mobile, naively under the impression that this is all being done for free over a wireless network, you can quickly rack up large excess data bills or find yourself over your monthly allowance within a few days. At home, the situation…

I HAVE BEEN writing this column for just over four years, and I thought it might be good to see whether the pace of change in the prevalence and investigation of cybercrime has kept up with the astonishing rate of change in the actual technology. In 2010, just before I retired from the police, the central e-crime unit was enjoying a fair amount of success. Partnerships, although in their infancy, were being made with the anti-virus industry, academia and the biggest cybercrime target at the time, the banking industry. There was no doubt the police had a lot of ground to make up, and any expertise in this area was to be found in computer crime units, as they were known. However, these units were inundated with forensic examination of…

VIRGIN GALACTIC’S space plans took a giant leap forward when Richard Branson’s outfit was awarded the operator licence from the US Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation that it needs to actually fly into space. The company immediately took one of its rockets out for a successful run to “stretch its legs”. The operator licence was awarded to Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, or VSS Unity, and the firm said that immediately allows for commercial use of the vehicle. The spacecraft was taken on what is called a ‘taxi run’ – we don’t know whether the meter was running, but presumably the traffic was relatively light. Virgin Galactic’s senior vice-president of operations, Mike Moses, said: “The granting of our operator licence is an important milestone for Virgin Galactic, as is…

£753 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT Brand new parts make this an attractive mid-range PC, even with its locked CPU REGULAR READERS WILL recall that Shopper 342 contained a review of a certain Overclockers UK PC, the Kinetic H3. Don’t be alarmed; we haven’t accidentally tested the same PC twice in some sort of catastrophic memory failure. Rather, Overclockers UK has updated the Kinetic H3 line with beefier components, producing such specs as this mid-range, AMD RX 480-equipped build. Indeed, at £753 it’s much more capable on paper than the £500 model we originally tested. Besides the new graphics card – famed for its superb price-to-performance ratio – this Kinetic H3 also packs an Intel Core i5-6400, 8GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 RAM, a 1TB hard disk and a 240GB SSD; pretty…

£750 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It’s not particularly fast, but the Asus ZenBook Flip UX360CA is a beautifully made hybrid with excellent battery life HYBRID LAPTOPS SEEM to be ten a penny these days, but Asus’s brand-new ZenBook Flip UX360CA and its gorgeous aluminium chassis really do stand out from the crowd. With its spun-metal finish, slim 13.9mm profile and 360° hinge, it looks stunning and is a world away from the comparatively chunky dimensions of Dell’s flippable Inspiron 13 5000 series (opposite). The UX360CA’s metal chassis brings a welcome degree of durability to the device, too, which is more than can be said for many other 360° hybrids. Combine that with an equally sturdy pair of hinges and the UX360CA easily feels as though it could withstand multiple flips…

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s quick and cheap, but the Honor 5C’s uninspiring build quality and mediocre battery life leave it floundering AFTER THE HONOR 5X (Shopper 339) failed to make much of an impression earlier in the year, Honor has tried again with the even cheaper Honor 5C. It’s easy to see where the purse strings have been tightened: the 5X’s finger sensor has gone completely, and the screen has shrunk from 5.5in to 5.2in. Still, design-wise it could pass for a far pricier phone, with its smooth curved edges and brushed metal rear, even if the rest of the frame is plastic. Sadly, its durability is suspect. Our review sample arrived with the metal backplate covered in gouges and the screen, lacking the protection of Gorilla Glass,…

£350 • From www.mobilefun.co.uk VERDICT The best portable 360° camera money can buy, so long as you’ve got the right phone for the job THIS BIZARRE-LOOKING device is the next stage of Samsung’s virtual reality masterplan, following the Gear VR headset (Shopper 340). The Gear 360’s dual 180° cameras can shoot full 360° video footage, allowing you to create your own VR photos and movies. It’s not cheap, but it does feel supremely solid and sturdy. It’s bulkier than the Ricoh Theta S and LG 360 Cam, and at 153g it’s heavier, too, but it’s far from cumbersome, feeling almost like a snooker ball. It’s also IP53 certified, with rubber sealed ports. That means it’s protected against sand, dust and splashes of water, but don’t go dunking it in a…

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 £275 • From www.geforce.co.uk VERDICT Premium performance at a competitive price, this is the card to buy for 4K and VR gaming on a budget THE GTX 1060 isn’t just competing against the AMD Radeon RX 480 (see below); Nvidia has made the lofty claim that it can stand up to the mighty GeForce GTX 980, which cost well over £400 when it launched in 2014. The 6GB of VRAM is encouraging, though the 1,280 CUDA cores is a big drop from the GTX 980’s 2,048 – it’s up to the Pascal architecture to make up the difference in efficiency. GPU-Z measured the GTX 1060’s memory bandwidth at 192.2GB/s, compared to the GTX 980’s 288.4GB/s. Nevertheless, in our benchmarks, the GTX 1060 distinguished itself. It produced…

01A basic PC costing around £350 will be able to run everyday office, multimedia and education software and will easily cope with surfing the internet. It might even be able to run some modern games. Many PCs can be sold either with or without a monitor. If you don’t like the display that the manufacturer is offering, you can always use your current one, or buy another one separately. 02If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 will cope well with many 3D games, but to play the latest 3D games smoothly (and enjoy the best-quality graphics) it’s worth upgrading to a more powerful card such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970. 03All modern PCs come…

01 All tablets rely on an operating system (OS) to run apps. You have three main choices: Apple’s iOS, which runs on the iPad, Android, which Google licenses to various manufacturers, and Windows 10, which is slowly becoming more common in hybrid tablets and convertibles. If you own an Apple or Google smartphone, you can download your apps, music and so on to a tablet that runs the same OS, so it makes sense to stick with a compatible device. 02 It’s important to pick a tablet that has a good-quality high-resolution screen. Many budget tablets have 1,280x800-resolution displays, but better tablets have Full HD 1,920x1,080 panels, and we’re starting to see tablets that have even higher screen resolutions. Some are as high as 2,560x1,600 or even 4K. Entry-level tablets…

01A 32in Full HD TV costs around £200 and will suit smaller living rooms. TVs look much smaller in the shop than in your home, so measure the space available before you buy. Curved TVs are becoming increasingly more common, but bear in mind that these typically take up more floor space than a traditional flat set. 02A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can display a 1080p image. You can still buy TVs with a 720p (1,366x768) resolution, but they’re no cheaper and the image won’t be as sharp. 3,840x2,560 Ultra HD resolution, or 4K, TVs are finally available at reasonable prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for one over a 1080p model. 03Consider the number of inputs you’ll need to connect the rest of your equipment. Two HDMI ports should be…

01 You should be able to buy a decent inkjet printer for less than £40. High-quality printing is possible on such a printer, but it will be slow. The actual print speed of an inkjet can be half the quoted (maximum) speed for text documents, and even slower when printing graphics. Budget inkjet printers such as these are designed only for light use and can be expensive to run. 02 For £60 you can buy a much more capable printer that’s either faster and better built or better at reproducing photos. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. Look for inkjets that can handle all your office media, such as envelopes and labels. 03 If photos are your priority, speed is less…

01 You really don’t have to spend much to buy a decent graphics card that can drive multiple monitors. The AMD Radeon R7 250 costs less than £60, for example, and while it isn’t suited to playing the latest games in Full HD, it is perfect for watching videos, browsing the web and playing basic games. 02 You’ll need to spend more money if you want to play the latest games. A good mid-range gaming graphics card is the Nvidia GTX 950, which is powerful enough to play any of the latest games. High-powered cards tend to be more expensive, so expect to pay over £300 if you want to play games in Ultra HD at the highest quality settings. 03 Check that your chosen card has the graphics outputs…

£130 • From www.bt.com AS THE SMART Hub is designed specifically for BT Broadband, getting it up and running is easy – simply spring out its little legs and plug in your RJ11 telephone cable at the rear. You can ditch any Openreach modem if you have BT Infinity; if you have ADSL, make sure that the other end of the cable is connected to an ADSL filter. There’s no Ethernet WAN port, but if you need one (in other words, if you have Fibre to the Home) you can convert one of the four Gigabit Ethernet ports into a WAN port. You’ll obviously lose one wired port in the process, however, which may annoy those who need to buy an Ethernet switch. The basic configuration merges 2.4GHz and 5GHz…

£176 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A future-proof and potentially extremely fast router that’s ready for all types of connections THE NIGHTHAWK X4S was a world first when it launched in 2015. It was the only DSL modem router that supported Wave 2 Wi-Fi, quad-stream on both bands and multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO). Typically, Wi-Fi signals are shared among devices from a single pool, with less bandwidth available as more devices connect to a network. MU-MIMO lets a router broadcast a signal from a number of sources to multiple systems simultaneously, directing separate bandwidth streams to up to four devices, as long as the devices are MU-MIMO compatible. With the addition of quad-stream broadcasting on both frequency bands and beamforming, the Nighthawk X4S has a huge maximum bandwidth of 2.53Gbit/s, with 800Mbit/s…

£90 • From www.currys.co. VERDICT The attractive TP-Link Archer C9 has top performance at a reasonable price THE PROSPECT OF an AC1900-rated router for less than £100 is an enticing one. A dual-band router, the TP-Link Archer C9 can broadcast simultaneously on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands at the usual ratings of 600Mbit/s and 1,300Mbit/s respectively. It’s a good-looking router, too. Its glossy white finish with silver accents could almost be described as classy. It’s about the size of a hardback book and is designed to be propped upright with its integrated stand. There is one downside to this stand, though – because it’s permanently sticking out, the Archer C9 can’t be laid flat or mounted to a wall to keep it out of the way. SOCKET WATCH There are…

GIBSON Trainer Ti100 £150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Gibson Trainer Ti100 has plenty of runner-friendly features, but is less suitable for other fitness activities AT FIRST GLANCE, Gibson’s Trainer Ti100 looks like a conventional pair of neckbandstyle wireless Bluetooth earphones. However, several clever design tricks make them excellent headphones for running. For instance, between the two earbuds is a cable with a pulsating LED light, which will give night runners extra visibility on the roads, though only to cars approaching from behind, as the light ends up at the back of your neck The LED slots into a magnetic clip, which has numerous benefits: it prevents the light from slipping beneath your clothes, it takes extra slack out of the neckband, and it looks much slicker than the pinch…

BOSE Solo 5 £179 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT The Bose Solo 5 is a simple budget soundbar with a useful universal remote, but its sound quality is a little disappointing THE BOSE SOLO 5 is one of the smaller soundbars we’ve seen, looking more like a dedicated 5.1-centre channel speaker than a soundbar. It measures 548x70x86mm and weighs 6.35kg, making it easy to slip under a TV or mount to a wall (though you’ll need to buy the £35 mounting kit separately). There aren’t any control buttons on the soundbar itself, but Bose includes a universal remote control. While a remote control is often included with most soundbars, the Bose universal remote is impressive as it can be programmed to control other devices, such as Blu-ray players, using the database…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Top tips for video editing When you’ve got a folder full of raw video, how do you make sense of it all? Ben Pitt reveals how to make the most of your footage THIS ARTICLE IS a follow-up to Multimedia Expert, Shopper 340, which revealed what’s involved in shooting a video project. Now that you’ve had a few months to plan and shoot your video, it’s time to fire up your editing software and complete the project. Video editing involves lots of disparate elements: video, dialogue, music, sound effects, video effects, transitions and titles. Thankfully, there’s only one thing you really have to worry about: the story. A story might be fictional, factual or not really a story at all in the strict sense. If you’re making a cooking…

CONTACT LETTERS letters@computershopper.co.uk STARTUP SLOWDOWN Starting in Windows 8 (and included in 10) is a feature called Fast Startup, which Microsoft describes as a recommended feature. However, although this can speed up the startup process for PCs with their C: drives on a hard disk, the effects are far less impressive when the C: drive is on an SSD. My experience with SSDs is that Fast Startup offers as little as two seconds’ improvement to the startup process, but can add significantly to the time it takes to shut down. Fast Startup works by hibernating the Windows kernel and saving the image in a single file, then loading this file on the next boot-up. Without Fast Startup, loading the kernel from an HDD involves many separate disk accesses, each with…

Mel Croucher Raves Pokémon Go may be taking the world by storm, but it’s not particularly original – and the pioneer behind the concept is as pleased as Piman HERE WE ARE, months after its release, and Pokémon Go is still making headlines. This charmingly idiotic game has taken the world by storm, and I can’t resist it. You see, I love Pokémon, and I love it for the most personal reason in the world. I love it because I am its grandfather. It was 35 years ago that I came up with the daft idea to launch a video game inviting players to hunt cutesy characters, not in a fantasy landscape but in the real world. My game was called Pimania, and Pokémon is its direct descendent. Today’s Pokémon…

Canada Flying paint A team at Professor Paul Kry’s laboratory at McGill University’s School of Computer Science in Montreal have created a mini fleet of artist drones, which can create pretty decent pictures by flying up to paper and making a dot-shaped mark out of ink. This is an artistic technique known as stippling. Motion sensors and the tiny drones have teamed up to paint luminaries including Alan Turing and Grace Kelly, and to fill the blank walls of Professor Kry’s offices. United Kingdom A VR bicycle made to view A man is cycling across the UK from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Nothing unusual in that, you might say. Except this chap, Aaron Puzey, an Australian who migrated to Scotland, is doing it virtually using a smartphone app that…

IT MIGHT BE easy to assume, if for nothing except ubiquity, that Casio made the first LCD watches. In fact, it didn’t. Casio was a bit slow to join a party that had already been started by firms such as Pulsar. The first digital electronic watch came in 1970 from Pulsar and was an LED prototype. It came and went, like the passing of time, but informed an industry and inspired consumers. In the UK we had Black Watch, which was launched in the mid-1970s by Sinclair Radionics and is still considered to be one of the earliest digital watches. The Black Watch came out in 1975 as either a complete wristwatch or in kit form. It had a black screen and the time would light up in a red…

£1,000 • From www.johnlewis.com THE YOGA 900S is a stripped-down version of Lenovo’s flagship ultra-portable, the Yoga 900. It has a slower processor, less RAM and a lower-resolution display than its predecessor, but the trade-off is that it shaves around 300g off the 900’s overall weight, making it the company’s lightest laptop yet at just 999g. Its gorgeous 12.8mm chassis still has room for full-sized USB ports, so you’re not sacrificing flexibility for a lighter, more streamlined device. Admittedly, the single USB2 port also does double duties as the main power supply, so you’ll lose this whenever you’re plugged into the mains. However, you also get a USB3 port and a USB Type-C port, the latter of which can output video to external displays and support USB3-speed devices provided you…

£1,380 • From shop.lenovo.com VERDICT Expensive but almost flawless, the ThinkPad X1 Tablet is a deserving Surface Pro 4 competitor LENOVO’S THINKPAD X1 Tablet is all about choice. With a bunch of different plugins and upgradability options, which add some new features to the mix, you should be able to find the right device and extras to suit your needs – though this flexibility doesn’t come cheap. For instance, you’ll have to pay an additional £140 for the ‘Productivity Module’ that came with our review unit. For that money, the module increases the battery life and adds an extra USB3 port, HDMI port and OneLink+ connector. The tablet itself comes in a variety of flavours, with prices starting at £1,050 and ramping up steeply. You get the choice of either…

£280 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its good looks and brilliant display, the Galaxy A5 is a match for much pricier phones WHILE THE NEW Galaxy A5 has inherited the good looks of last year’s flagship Galaxy S6 (Shopper 329), it hasn’t done the same with the latter’s premium price. You can pick up a Galaxy A5 for as little as £280, putting it into prime Nexus 5X and OnePlus 3 territory. Swapping the old A5’s metal unibody for a luxurious glass back, it’s rather prone to picking up messy fingerprints, but its hard, slim frame does feel immensely comfortable in your hand, and its narrow bezels make it easy to grip despite its somewhat slippery rear surface. The best thing about the new A5, though, is that, unlike its…

£300 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A lovely design and great desktop image quality at a good price IT MIGHT SEEM like a small thing, but it’s amazing how much more pleasant your monitor is to use when it’s got narrow bezels. It makes your screen feel much larger than it actually is, and when they sit flush against the panel as they do on the AOC Q2781PQ, it makes it feel like you’re computing in the future, as it creates the illusion that your desktop is floating in the air. The Q2781PQ is a particularly gorgeous example, as its skinny bezels measure just 8mm across, allowing your PC’s desktop to take up 93% of the entire front of the monitor. It’s not particularly expensive, but it feels like something special.…

Free upgrade • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT A step in the right direction, the Anniversary Update takes what was great about Windows 10 and improves the experience WINDOWS 10 WASN’T just a chance for Microsoft to redeem itself after the horrors of Windows 8, it was also an opportunity to completely revamp the way OS upgrades worked. No longer would there be a period of years of relative inactivity before a big new launch; this method would be replaced with regular, free updates. The first free upgrade, the Anniversary Update (AU), hit our computers at the start of August. If you haven’t upgraded yet, here’s what you can expect – and we’ll tell you whether it’s worth the effort. INTERFACE TWEAKS It’s fair to say that Windows 10 pretty much nailed…

01A basic laptop costing around £300 will run everyday office, multimedia and education software, but it won’t be suitable for 3D gaming or processor-intensive tasks such as video editing. Many laptops at this price have a 15.4in screen and weigh around 2.4kg, so they’re best used around the house and for occasional journeys. 02If you want to play modern games, you’ll need a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M. Good gaming laptops tend to have large 17in screens and weigh around 3kg, so they’re best suited to use at home. 03If you want a laptop that you can take everywhere, look for a modelthat weighs less than 2kg. For the best portability, buy one that has an 11in or 13in screen. In general,…

01 A basic digital camera will suit someone who wants to take pictures to view on their computer and create 7x5in prints. It should cost around £80, but there may be hidden downsides such as slow performance and very basic user controls. 02 Spend a little more and you’ll get a higher resolution. A 16-megapixel sensor has the potential to produce sharp prints up to A3 size, but only if it and the lens are of a suitably high quality. Very high resolutions in compact cameras tend to boost noise more than detail levels, so many of the best models strike a sensible balance by using a 12-megapixel sensor. Back-illuminated CMOS sensors tend to produce less noise than CCDs, but check our reviews to find out how a particular model…

01 Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes, so you’ll need to decide what you want to do with the speaker before you buy. If you don’t plan to take your music outdoors or around the house, look for a wired speaker. These are typically cheaper than speakers with built-in batteries. If you do want a portable speaker, however, pay particular attention to how much it weighs. Ruggedised models should be able to survive accidental drops, water spills and unexpected rain showers. 02 Many of the cheapest Bluetooth speakers use the lossy A2DP Bluetooth protocol, which is prone to compressing your music and discarding detail compared with the original recording. It’s hard to tell the difference when listening to pocket-sized speakers, but if you’re looking for a speaker to…

01 Wireless routers each use a number of Wi-Fi standards, so you shouldn’t have any trouble connecting your computer or phone wirelessly if you get an 802.11n or 802.11ac router. Nearly all routers support 802.11n, so even a cheap model should provide decent performance. You can expect a transfer speed of around 40Mbit/s at a distance of 10m from any modern 802.11n router. The very latest routers use the 802.11ac standard, which provides tremendously fast transfer speeds. Some devices still don’t support the 802.11ac standard, so check the specifications before you buy. 02 If you subscribe to an ADSL broadband service, you should buy a wireless router that has a built-in ADSL modem. This will cost more than the equivalent cable router, but it allows you to connect your router…

£210 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT The DIR-890L is a good choice if you have a lot of devices on your network, but its longrange performance is below par for the price THE D-LINK DIR-890L is a seriously eye-catching router, being halfway between an interstellar probe and space scarab. It’s available in glossy red or a slightly more subdued black; not everyone is going to be fond of its heavily angular, pyramidal shape, but we found its design a refreshing break from the norm The router’s tri-band specification requires a whopping six external high-gain antennas, which allow it to broadcast two 5GHz and one 2.4GHz networks. As the DIR-890L doesn’t have a built-in modem, there’s a Gigabit WAN port for connecting to an ADSL or fibre modem or another router. There…

£370 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Heavy Wi-Fi users will appreciate the dual 5GHz networks, which will get faster with new devices, but there’s no escaping the high price WITH ITS HIGH price, there’s no doubting that this beast of a router is designed for those that demand the absolute best performance. It’s packed with the latest 802.11ac technology, including dual 5GHz networks, each with a theoretical throughput of 2,166Mbit/s thanks to the 4x4 MIMO (four radios and four antennas per network), and a 2.4GHz network that can be set to a maximum speed of 1,000Mbit/s. It’s quick to get going for the first time, thanks to the pre-configured wireless network and easy setup wizard that gets it configured to run with your ISP. Netgear’s clear interface also makes it easy…

£180 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT With support for all types of internet connections and a very fast 5GHz network, this router is one for those that want the best TP-LINK’S ARCHER VR2600 router is kitted out with the latest 4x4 MIMO technology, to give it a maximum throughput of 1,733Mbit/s on the 5GHz band. It’s also designed to be a router for all, with both a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port and an RJ11 port for the combined VDSL/ADSL modem, so you can use it with fibre connections, too. In short, there’s no internet connection that this router can’t connect to. Setup is pretty straightforward thanks to the brilliant setup wizard. This has default configurations for all the major ISPs, so you should be up and running quickly without having to…

LINDY BNX-60 £80 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A respectable and budget-friendly pair of wireless, active noise-cancelling headphones ACTIVE NOISE-CANCELLING (ANC) headphones can be a godsend, but don’t come cheap; Bose’s QuietComfort 25 cost £250 and Samsung’s Level Over around £240. Enter the Lindy BNX-60, a budget-friendly pair of ANC headphones. The earcups have a soft plastic backing and there’s a generous amount of padding, on both the earcups and the headband, to allow for a comfortable fit. Bluetooth capability enables wireless use, and the BNX-60 supports the aptX codec, which has better compression than standard Bluetooth – a pleasant surprise at this price. The left earcup has media playback controls for skipping and pausing tracks, and the play/pause button is used to turn the headphones on and put them in…

BOWERS & WILKINS Zeppelin Wireless £499 • From www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk VERDICT The Zeppelin Wireless is a streamlined, modern update to an audio classic that manages to improve on the original THE LATEST VERSION of B&W’s Zeppelin speaker has all the connections you’ll need, from wired Ethernet to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and by removing the now largely redundant Apple dock, the Zeppelin’s lines are far cleaner than the original’s. It truly lives up to its name, with gorgeous looks that ask to be displayed; it’s a conversation piece as well as a speaker. The shape also complements the driver arrangement. The 6.5in subwoofer in the centre has a long voice coil, directing lower frequencies directly forwards. This is flanked by two 3.5in mid-range, Fixed Suspension Transducer drivers, which B&W says allow the…

Share and share alike in Excel Q I run the membership of a small club of about 300 to 400 members. The list is saved as a database spreadsheet in Excel 2010, and is in fairly constant change with subscription payment, new memberships or resignations and so on. I am solely responsible for maintaining the database, but one or two others have to be aware of the changes. To send updated versions to those concerned on an almost daily basis is tedious and open to error. Can you suggest a method where they could have access to my file (they all have access to the internet)? I’m not very keen to provide them with access to my computer. John Mathias A The most obvious route is to use Microsoft’s free…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Re-use your old router That old ISP-provided router still has some use. Clive Webster shows you how it can extend your Wi-Fi range, neatly hook up all your smart AV kit, and give you Wi-Fi everywhere from the loft to your shed IF YOU’VE JUST bought a new router, don’t take your old one to the recycling centre; you can use its Wi-Fi radio and network ports to extend your overall Wi-Fi coverage or provide an internet connection to your YouView box or smart TV. If you have a spare HomePlug, you can even create strong Wi-Fi coverage in your shed or garage. Even your brand new, super-fast router’s Wi-Fi signal might struggle to penetrate a thick stone wall or give you coverage up into your loft conversion. Use…

HERE I AM, back in the South of France. We’ll not discuss the ‘what, again?’ subject as we covered that in Shopper 343. Wi-Fi speeds have improved since last year; they’ve possibly put some more bandwidth between the site routers and the internet backbone. The cheapest way to subscribe is to get a password for a full month from a French company called Wifipass. It gives you a username and a separate password. With my old Lenovo running Windows 7, I accessed the internet by opening the browser and entering a URL. The Wifipass router would have already handed you an IP address via DHCP so it intercepted your request and responded with its own login screen using a domain called passman.fr. Enter the username and password and you’re connected.…

SAY WHAT? Google unveils FaceTime rival Duo GOOGLE HAS OFFICIALLY released Duo, its Apple FaceTimerivalling, Skype-usurping two-way video conversation application for both Android and iOS. Duo is a mobile application that was announced at Google I/Oearlier this year and hit the download stores in mid-August. It was an immediate success as users rushed to download it – apparently, even more than Pokémon Go. The premise is simple. Google account users can video-call each other – a longstanding feature of Gmail and Google Chat – without making a mobile call and, depending on Wi-Fi, not spending a penny. Google says that the app switches between wireless and mobile connections when necessary and without breaking up a call. The company suggests that the whole Duo experience is an effortless breeze, explaining that…

£799 • From www.dell.co.uk VERDICT Its battery life and display aren’t brilliant, but the Inspiron 13 5368’s speed and build quality help bridge the gap DELL IS GOING all-out this year on mid-range laptop/tablet hybrids, and the latest series to receive the 2-in-1 treatment is the Inspiron 13 5000. We tested the premier £799 Inspiron 13 5368 model, but specs start at £499. Just like the Inspiron 15 5668 (of which it’s essentially a miniaturised version), the Inspiron 13 5368 looks stunning, and its lightly textured gun-metal grey chassis adds a touch of class to its design that’s rarely seen on mid-range laptops. It might be made out of plastic, but it feels remarkably robust and showed very few signs of flex when put under pressure. Its compact size, with…

£700 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT With its mammoth battery, blistering speed and excellent screen, the Galaxy Note 7 is the phablet to beat TAKING SEVERAL CUES from 2016’s Galaxy S7 range, the Note 7 (the first Galaxy Note device to release in the UK since 2014’s Note 4) is arguably one of the most practical smartphones on the planet. Its trademark S Pen stylus is probably the reason you’d choose it over the slightly smaller Galaxy S7 Edge, but with waterproofing up to 1.5m, a microSD slot, a fingerprint and iris scanner combo, colossal 3,500mAh battery and Samsung’s gorgeous curved edge display, there’s a lot else going for it. While a bit of a fingerprint magnet, the Note is a luxurious, classy smartphone that actually feels more comfortable to hold…

£349 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It’s keenly priced, but the EOS 1300D doesn’t do enough to fend off strong competition THE EOS 1300D is Canon’s latest entry-level SLR. It has a fair amount in common with the pricier Canon EOS 750D (Shopper 332) except that it omits various extra features that the 750D and its predecessors had accrued over the years. The 1300D’s 18-megapixel sensor, fixed LCD screen and nine-point autofocus mean it’s similar to 2010’s EOS 550D. One thing that’s included on the 1300D that you didn’t get with the 550D – or with the 1200D, which this camera replaces – is Wi-Fi, which accompanies NFC for easy connection to Android devices. Setting up isn’t quite effortless, but after a few attempts we established a connection. The companion app…

From www.currys.co.uk HP’S OFFICEJET PRO 6960 is a mid-range colour inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) that’s designed for the home and small office. At nearly £100 it’s not particularly cheap, but the standard specification includes a three-year guarantee, automatic duplex (double-sided) printing, scanning, faxing and copying, and both wired and wireless networking. The only obvious omission is a USB host port for walk-up printing or scanning. This MFP’s design is typical of the latest generation of HP printers: all swoops andcurved surfaces, and a colour touchscreen rather than the clutter of conventional buttons. It’s rather nice, but it’s not perfect: there’s a lot of sombre black plastic, and the 250-sheet paper input tray is captive in the base. We often note how this can make loading and unloading paper fiddly, and…

SO YOU’VE TAKEN the plunge to Windows 10, but you’ve noticed that the new Mail app is a bit lacking. The truth is that resident email applications have started to become less common in recent years. As operating systems become more fragmented, and more and more people use tablets, you’d be forgiven for thinking that webmail was the only show in town. But far from it. There are still some alternatives to your old faithful Outlook Express to be had. Here are four of them. Outlook 2016 is the newest version of the old faithful, Thunderbird is perhaps the best-known alternative, plus we’ve picked out two of our favourites, the younger pretenders. MICROSOFT Outlook 2016 From £5.99 per month; £60 per year • From www.office.com VERDICT It really has come…

01 A smartphone’s operating system (OS) dictates its basic features and which third-party software you can install. There are three main contenders: Apple’s iOS, which is found on the iPhone, Google’s Android, which is used by various handset manufacturers, and Windows Phone, which is mainly used on Lumia phones. Apple iOS and Google Android have the most apps available but Windows Phone is slowly catching up. 02All smartphones have colour screens, but their resolutions vary. Basic models have 800x480 pixels, but text can be indistinct. Look for a display that has at least 1,280x720 pixels so it’s easy to browse web pages. Don’t worry too much about built-in media players or Office document editors; you can always install apps to replace these with better versions later The image quality of…

01 A basic 24in LCD monitor costs around £100. It will be fine for typical Windows work but is likely to have poor viewing angles, so you’ll need to sit straight on for the best picture quality. Its colour accuracy may not be very good, either. 02 A VGA input lets you use the monitor with any PC, but the quality may not be as good as it is over DVI or HDMI. Both are digital connections and require a compatible graphics card but they avoid the need for digital-to-analogue or analogue-todigital conversions, which can reduce image quality. A digital connection achieves the best picture automatically, so you won’t have to adjust clock or phase settings as you do with analogue connections. Many DVI and all HDMI connections support HDCP,…

01 Action cameras are typically much smaller than a regular camcorder, as they are designed to be mounted to a bike, board or car, or worn on your person. As the name suggests, they are designed primarily for shooting action footage, but because of their small size they are ideal for strapping on to your pet’s collar or your children’s toys for a different perspective. 02 Almost all action cameras will shoot Full HD video, and some will even shoot 4K, but frame rate is arguably more important than resolution when it comes to action video. Higher frame rates will mean smoother clips, and super-high frame rate videos can be played in slow motion to emphasise exciting shots. Keep an eye out for 4k/30, 1080p/60 and 720p/120 models for the…

01 A basic 1TB internal hard disk should cost around £40. This will be fast enough for general use and will provide enough storage for most users. Make sure the hard disk you choose has the appropriate interface type for your PC. Some mechanical hard disks still come with SATA2 interfaces, but newer models and most solid-state drives (SSDs) have faster SATA3 interfaces. You’ll need a motherboard with a SATA3 port if you want to benefit from SATA3’s faster speeds; SATA3 disks will work with SATA2 ports but can only transfer files at SATA2 speeds. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s extra bandwidth for fast file transfers. They use flash memory similar to that found in USB flash drives, and although they tend to provide less capacity than…

GETTING STARTED The download instructions on the card insert (opposite) show you how to connect to the download site. Make sure you type in the web address exactly as shown. You’ll need your coupon code the first time you log on to the site. ANY PROBLEMS If you need help with any of the software this month, please send an email to letters@computershopper.co.uk. We check this inbox regularly. Please include the issue number of the magazine and your coupon code. WHY DOWNLOADS In order to provide us with free software, publishers now require us to offer the applications as a download and to require online registration. You need to use the unique code printed in the box on the card insert to register and download the software in this issue.…

£190 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT The imposing RT-AC3200 is packed with features, but its wireless performance isn’t the best IT’S HARD FOR a router with six external antennas to avoid looking imposing, but the all-black Asus RT-AC3200 looks even more spider-like than most; it’s not a design that’s suitable for anyone suffering from debilitating arachnophobia. The router is designed for environments where lots of devices need to connect at once, and where network speed is vital. It’s a tri-band router able to broadcast on three simultaneous networks: two on the 5GHz band and one on 2.4GHz. Since the 5GHz networks have a theoretical throughput of 1,300Mbit/s each, with a further 600Mbit/s for the 2.4GHz network, this gives you a staggering combined throughput of 3,200Mbit/s. There’s no built-in modem, however, so…

£114 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT The Linksys WRT1200AC has decent 5GHz 802.11ac performance, but there are better routers for the price LINKSYS ROUTERS TYPICALLY fall into one of two categories: sleek and stylish models, such as the E1700 300, or comparatively garish but more fully featured models such as this, the dual-band WRT1200AC. While Linksys’s other models look to blend in with your décor, the WRT1200AC screams ‘router’ with its array of blinking LEDs and two external antennas, all finished off in traditional Linksys blue. If you like your tech to look a bit geeky, you’ll love it. The heat-dissipating vents on the top of the router make it clear that the WRT1200AC is a serious piece of networking kit. It’s a large router, but those looking to save space…

£116 • From transparent-uk.com VERDICT Easy to set up, with lots of advanced features, but performance is patchy SYNOLOGY IS BEST known for its NAS devices, so it was a surprise to see it launch a router – though its plain black plastic casing is very much in keeping with the company’s aesthetic. The only unusual touch is the pair of fixed feet at the back, which raise the router by a few centimetres. There’s no version with a built-in ADSL modem, so ADSL and cable customers will have to plug their existing modem into the WAN port. There’s also a button alongside the WPS button for turning off the Wi-Fi without turning off the router itself. The RT1900ac is very easy to set up. Once plugged into your home…

B&O PLAY Beoplay A1 £199 • From www.beoplay.com VERDICT The B&O Beoplay A1 not only looks gorgeous but it sounds wonderful, too B&O PLAY IS the younger-skewed, sub-brand of Bang & Olufsen but it maintains many of the latter’s high-end principles. This is evident with the Beoplay A1 Bluetooth speaker. At £199, it’s on the pricier end of the spectrum, but it’s still considerably less than options from the likes of Bowers & Wilkins and Riva. When it comes to looks, it’s no contest. The Beoplay A1 is not only the best-looking Bluetooth speaker we’ve seen, but also the best in terms of the way it feels in your hands. It’s made of an aluminium dome that fits neatly up against a moulded polymer base, which gives it a non-slip…

Can I image my Windows 10 disk? Q I have finally upgraded to Windows 10. With Windows 7, I used Acronis True Image to create a regular image of my PC on another disk, but this feature is apparently not compatible with Windows 10 and has been removed. Native to Windows 7, there was a facility to make a disk image and also an emergency startup disk, but I’m not sure I can find their Windows 10 equivalents. Within the Control Panel I’ve found an option to create a system repair disk, but it’s marked with ‘Windows 7’ – I’m not sure why. Will this produce a disk image of my operating system on an external disk, as I could do with Acronis? Also, how do I create an emergency…